ATMega168 MCU as setup for Nerdkits.com

There is a thrill that is hard to explain the first time you burn your code to a microcontroller. Excitement and apprehension abound as you plug in the power supply for the first time. My first solo microcontroller (MCU) experience came recently, and something has changed inside of me. As with everything, the best place to begin is at the beginning.

I had been tracking the box all day online, and the text that had once said ‘at unit’ was finally replaced with ‘delivered’. I knew that this was something I wanted, and it was finally here. I pulled up in front of my mailbox and got the key to the package locker. The key stuck a little and I smiled to myself at the metaphor; I had spent this long to open this part of my feild and the only thing holding me back was a sticky lock.

I had decided to go with the kit provided by nerdkits.com, mostly because I had heard nothing but good stuff and they seemed to be pretty helpful to the MCU noobs. I registered quicky on their website and downloaded their users’ guide. In about an hour, I had the device wired up in their original configuration, i.e. MCU and LCD wired together. Holding my breath, I connected the battery for the first time and the LCD spit out a nice message from the nerdkits.com team.

It all started that day, and this has been one of the biggest revolutions in my programming since I learned object oriented programming. I am loving good olde procedural c, yup c, programming. At d+21, I am still enjoying this quite a bit. I have started messing with the pulse width modulation function of the MCU to drive servos as well as play music on the provided piezo buzzer. I have used the analog to digital converter to measure temperature and do rangefinding using a Sharp IR sensor. In short, I am feeling very engaged in this and wish I had picked it up before. I love the idea that I can program a circuit to do complex behaviors. In the 19 years since I first played with BASIC, I have always wanted something tangible from my programming. I believe I have found it in embedded.

I will post my experiments and experiences on here as I play with new stuff.

                          

I have started with a simple goal for now, model the crafts and locations to dynamically generate the Explorer I mission, not necessarily to real life spec. But to a decently realistic and good looking level of detail. To this end, I am working on modelling the Jupiter-C launch vehicle using correct dimensions weights etc. I will use this to create a pretty basic simulation in XNA and build on it adding stuff like the engine sounds I am also working on Here is a preview of some of the stuff I have coming

Audio:
The audio was created in Audacity using a high pressure cigarette lighter as the base sound, then I pretty much massaged it down a bit to get a nice roar. The start just uses reverb and amplitude changes to give the feeling of that initial surge at rocket startup. Pretty simple sounds to create so far. Kinda fun to be playing with audio again .
Engine Start
Engine Run

Images:

Jupiter-C RocketDyne Booster Tail Section

For fellow BARIS lovers, the game has been open-sourced and can be found here